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chadm's blog

I just saw a post at Linux Magazine that talks about a new Linux tool for BlackBerrys. It's called Pocketmac (Linux Edition), so you can see where it started. The program is in beta now and you can sign up here to test it.

Pocketmac Linux Edition should provide a nice alternative to Barry for those of you who prefer a GUI to the command line. Barry does provide a lot of capability, but doesn't appear to be the easiest to use app.

Some long overdue repositories were finally added. They include Ubuntu hardy-backports, Ubuntu hardy-partner, Medibuntu hardy, and OpenSuse 11.0. A complete database update has not been run, but as new versions of apps get released all of the repositories will be synced.

I'll be adding the Ubuntu intrepid repositories in the near future and looking at some others as well.

I recently installed the KDE4 version of Kubuntu on my laptop using the Wubi installer and was able to start using KWin's desktop effects on my laptop for the first time. I wasn't able to do so in the past because I didn't have a native install and VMware Player doesn't support hardware acceleration.

The Wubi installer was a great solution because it allowed me to install Kubuntu without disrupting my existing OS and also allows access to any existing files on the local hard drive.

After installing KDE4.1 beta 1 I started to get curious about battery life. I had heard that Vista's 3D desktop decreased battery life and wondered if KWin did the same.

A reader just sent in a link about Open CourseWare for Linux that is available from the College@Home site. It starts off with an Introduction section with various tutorials about Linux to get you started and then follows up with some more specific content.

The Use section covers some specific applications, a couple distro guides, and how to use Linux in some different categories like Office and Scientific fields. That is followed up by sections for Administrators, Business, Novell, Concepts, and Development. In all there are currently 54 different courses that have been posted.

I added new filter options so you can only view apps with specific toolkits. These new options are sub-entries to the overall Show Graphical Apps option. It must be checked for the others to matter. The available toolkit options are Gtk, Qt, Tk, wxW, and other. Ncurses already had a separate callout.

Hopefully this will help those KDE and Gnome users who prefer Qt and Gtk apps over alternatives.

I installed KDE4 on my desktop today so I could finally try out KWin in all its glory. If you haven't tried it yet I highly recommend it. KDE4 with desktop effects enabled is simply gorgeous. It's fast, responsive, and comes with a nice array of effects options.

Dim Inactive is one of the first effects that I enabled and I really like it so far. One of my pet peeves with Oxygen is that it doesn't change the color of a window's title bar to show which is active, but with Dim Inactive enabled this no longer matters. Instead of changing the title bar the windows in the background are darkened to create a clear contrast that makes it easier to focus on the foreground window.

A year ago I was really excited about KDE4, but the lack of some basic features I found whenever I tried a release candidate soured me a bit. I still loved the vision, it was just that it was hard to maintain excitement for an extended period of time. As a result, I tried the final release, discovered some of the same deficiencies, and went back to KDE3.

When the February update showed up in Kubuntu I decided to give it another go. Certain aspects still frustrated me: like the inability to reposition icons in the toolbar and the inability to add a folder to Places in Dolphin. Eventually I decided that I could live with the icon location for now and started spending more time playing with KDE4.

Now I'm happy that I did. Despite KDE4 still having a ways to go before being complete and polished, I love using it.

I'm currently in the process of moving Linux App Finder to a new VPS (virtual private server) with more memory and will be moving the database later today. Hopefully this will help reduce page load time when there is heavy traffic. The current server will stay active and the site should still be accessible the entire time, but new posts, screenshots, or votes may get missed between this afternoon and when the DNS change goes through. Thanks in advance for your patience.